Smokin' Joe

“There’s a fayun here to see you. A fayun. Awll the way from Idaho!” the secretary exclaimed in her thick Philadelphian accent. Upon hanging up the desk phone, she informed me that her boss would be down shortly, and my aunt and I took to a pair of cushioned chairs to wait. Moments later, two figures emerged from a hallway adjacent to the office in which we were situated. One of them, a dark-skinned fellow in a black cowboy hat, I recognized as Smokin’ Joe Frazier.

It was Spring Break my junior year in high school, and I had flown to Philadelphia to visit my sister, who was attending the University of Pennsylvania. From the first, I was keenly aware that these were the streets where walked that mythic pugilist of old whom I had read about, watched and imagined for so many years-- the legendary battler who entered every match with a fire in his belly, who never quit and never backed down and swarmed and hooked and worked and willed his way to victory, even when faced with bigger and more gifted foes. I wanted to stand before one of the greatest living monuments to the power of the human will. I wanted to meet the man, look in his eyes, shake his hand.

In contrast to the soft, squishy palms of we who have lead lives of comfort and privilege, Joe Frazier's hand felt like a leathery mat of sinew, hard and wiry strong. Though his career was now long behind him, his hair grizzled and his gait noticeably hobbled, I harbored no doubt that he could still have easily crumpled me in any contest of fisticuffs. The thought evidently crossed his own mind, for once we had taken adjacent seats and he had graciously signed the two boxing gloves I had brought (one was my own, the other my younger brother's- an unintentional gift, for I had mixed up our left gloves when packing for the flight), he informed me that he had a wayward son about my age (now in military school, he explained) who he used to meet in the ring every day and knock some sense into. I responded to the effect that I was sure he could still give me a good licking as well, at which time his face lit up; "Oh, you wanna fight?" he asked with a twinkle in his eye. It was an offer I could not but decline.